Archive for July, 2009

Scottsville Votes Down Meals Tax Increase

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 1, 2009 in Government, Taxes, Business and Politics.
The Dew Drop Inn's sign.
The now-defunct Dew Drop in, on Scottsville’s main drag, the iconic restaurant of the town. (Nannette Saunders / CC)

Scottsville Town Council has voted down a plan to hike their meals tax, Jason Bacaj writes in today’s Progress. In a 3-3 vote they decided not to increase the tax by 1%, to 5%, with one councilor saying that it “sends a bad signal” while they’re “trying to get new restaurants to town.” The increase would have brought in an estimated $20,000 annually. The price of gasoline is high enough that I can’t see that it would have made a difference from the perspective of a customer; if you live in Scottsville, it’s not worth the drive to C’ville, and if you don’t, then the cost of driving there is going to exceed significantly the additional pocket change that the tax would run you.

Bacaj, incidentally, is a recent hire new intern at the Progress. He’s a newly-minted graduate from rising senior at Washington & Lee University, where his bio at the school newspaper indicates that he was a member of their football team, he’s a skier, he double-majored in biology and journalism, and he hails from Morgantown.

07/07 Update: Matthew Rosenberg points out that Bacaj is an intern, rather than an employee.

3 Comments

Glenmore President Missing

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 2, 2009 in General News.

Mike Comer, president of Glenmore Country Club, is missing after taking a walk at Wintergreen, CBS 19 reports. He owns property at Wintergreen, and left on a walk at noon yesterday. When he didn’t return by early evening, his wife contacted the police. Search crews have checked the thirty miles of trails that web Wintergreen, so presumably they’ll now start checking off-trail.

10:10 PM Update: Police have called off the search for Comer, Liz Nagy reports for NBC 29, and they say that they don’t intend to resume it. The Nelson sheriff is a bit cagy in his description of the matter, implying that Comer has disappeared of his own accord.

4 Comments

Glenmore Pres. May Be Dodging Audit

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 6, 2009 in Crime.

Missing Glenmore president Michael Comer may be dodging an audit of Glenmore’s finances, or so it appears based on Kim Saltmarsh’s coverage at NBC 29. Prior to serving as president, Comer was the country club’s treasurer. You wouldn’t think that would put much money in play, but they’ve got an annual budget of $700,000. According to a press release from Glenmore, Comer had a meeting scheduled with a couple of board members to talk about why he hadn’t made all necessary financial data available to an auditor—that was the day that he disappeared. Right now Glenmore is only saying that “sufficient funds are available to continue normal operations and maintenance,” rather than saying that no money is missing. They’re in the midst of the first-ever audit of their finances (which is surprising for a $700k organization).

Obviously the suspicion here—which nobody wants to voice directly—is that Comer was skimming off the top; the audit was going to reveal theft, so he split town, presumably with a big chunk of Glenmore’s change. That’s nothing more than speculation, of course, with solely circumstantial evidence. But that’s bound to be where the investigation goes from here.

07/07 Update: As folks have brought up in the discussion, Glenmore the country club is a different legal and financial entity than Glenmore the homeowners association. Hawes Spencer explains the relationship in The Hook, but the important bit is that Comer is (was) involved with both.

31 Comments

What’s in The Daily Progress’ Future?

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 7, 2009 in Meta News and Business.

Katherine Ludwig has an important feature in this week’s C-Ville Weekly about what lies ahead for our newspaper of record. There’s a genuine danger that the Daily Progress will cease to exist because of the unfortunate synchronicity of Media General being run by dart-throwing chimps and the severe recession. Media General’s stock is in the tank, they seem to make the worst possible decision at every turn, and they’ve shown a willingness to hack away at the Progress in the name of profitability. Though the company doesn’t reveal the profitability of individual newspapers, the Progress is almost certainly strongly in the black, but Media General is looking out for their entire portfolio of hundreds of newspapers and other media properties. They don’t have Charlottesville’s best interests at heart, and if they can bring up their stock price by taking the Progress down to a thrice-weekly paper, or eliminating it entirely, don’t doubt that they’ll do it.

Ludwig talked to some Progress alumni (Bob Gibson and Wayne Mogielnicki, notably) to get their take on what lies ahead. Mogielnicki makes the important point that C’ville isn’t exactly lacking for media outlets, and that’s a considerable change in the past few years. A decade ago we had NBC-29, C-Ville Weekly, The Observer, The Progress, and WINA. Now we’re practically drowning in media outlets, although I’d argue that the most valuable work—investigative coverage, FOIA work, etc.—is coming from our two weeklies and (decreasingly) The Daily Progress, with the rehashing of press releases and the show-up-and-record-something coverage of the others being shown up by Charlottesville Tomorrow. As the Progress withers, the weeklies are muscling in, and impressively.

The big question, one that Ludwig never gets into seriously, is the one with no answer: What would Charlottesville media look like without the Progress? What functions does it perform that would need to be replaced? Is any media outlet prepared to take that on? Do we need a daily print publication, or can an online-only outlet fill that role? These are tough questions without clear answers, but this town has had a daily newspaper for most of its history, if we suddenly find its tasks undone, we might quickly come to regret not having collectively planned ahead.

Finally, Ludwig (and C-Ville Weekly) deserves credit for writing a snark-free, fair analysis of the state of a major competitor. It would be easy for the paper to have argued that a daily is unnecessary, or taken shots at the Progress for some of its lower moments, but instead they published an even-handed analysis that should start a community-wide discussion about what lies ahead for the Progress.

32 Comments

“The Charlottesville Bicentennial Ballad”

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 10, 2009 in History and Music.

Fun fact: Art Garfunkel backed the recording of a song commemorating Charlottesville in 1976. But how did that come to be?

First you have to know that Art Garfunkel lived in Cobham back in the 70s. Paul Simon’s musical partner had been hounded out of his prior home by the media, and had moved to Albemarle for some privacy. The estate of Beau Val was his new home—now Keswick Vineyards—and it worked out, in that the media left him alone.

The second thing to know is that 1976—the bicentennial—was a Big Deal in Charlottesville. That’s when the Rotunda was restored to Jefferson’s design from Stanford White’s redesign, Queen Elizabeth visited (for whom half of the municipal band accidentally played the national anthem, rather than “God Save the Queen”), and President Gerald Ford was the speaker at Monticello’s citizenship ceremony on Independence Day. History was in the air.

Album Cover

Local sign painter and banjo player Arthur Stubbs had written a song about Charlottesville that he wanted to record. Garfunkel—through what connection, I have no idea—served as the silent backer for the production, which was done at Carl Handy’s Monticello Records. The resulting record was “The Charlottesville Bicentennial Ballad,” the cover of which portrayed a soldier in a tri-corner hat, playing the banjo, standing in front of Monticello. Handy’s nephew, David, related this story on an Art Garfunkel fan website last year, where he explained that he’s been unable to find any evidence that anybody else has a copy of this record (though surely somebody must), and provided an accompanying letter from Garfunkel to Stubbs expressing his enthusiasm for the resulting recording.

Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that Garfunkel’s enthusiasm was matched by sales—years of pawing through the bins at Spencer’s, Plan 9, and Distraxshuns never turned up this little gem. So I don’t have an MP3 to present here, although I am hoping that a reader will be familiar with this—perhaps somebody old enough to have done the same pawing at Back Alley Disc or Band Box.

47 Comments

Businesses Agree to Sponsor Future July 4 Celebrations

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 14, 2009 in Entertainment.
Fireworks at McIntire Park
Fireworks explode over the tree line between CHS and McIntire Park.

Gray Television and StellarOne have agreed to sponsor a local Independence Day event for the next two years, The Daily Progress reports. Gray Television—owner of ABC-16, CBS-19, and Fox-27—will organize and sponsor the event, while the bank will pay for the fireworks. It’s not clear from the coverage right now, but I gather that StellarOne has signed up for just a two-year hitch, but that Gray intends to continue overseeing the event indefinitely. If that’s true, this will end the limbo that the celebration has occupied for since the Jaycees stopped putting on the event, as they had for some years.

7 Comments

City Considering Requiring Yard Sale Permits

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 16, 2009 in Government.

The Charlottesville Planning Commission is considering capping people at three yard sales per year—charging you $5 for a permit for every time you hold one—Jenn McDaniel writes for NBC-29. Director of Neighborhood Development Jim Tolbert says that the need for this arises from people buying and reselling stuff every weekend, running an ongoing business out of their residentially-zoned front yard. Julia Glendening at Charlottesville Tomorrow provides a whole lot more detail. Two of the cited reasons to enact this requirement are that yard sales often result in large numbers of signs being posted around the neighborhood (which the city ends up having to take down weeks later) and that the folks abusing the yard sale concept are basically running an illegal business. Planning commissioners raised the sorts of objections one would expect: this is an onerous regulation of an activity that’s part of a healthy local economy, people can’t be expected to actually bother getting a permit, and that perhaps there are better ways to deal with this problem. Also, since posting signs in the right-of-way is already illegal, as is running a business without a license, it’s probably best to use existing legal processes to deal with habitual offenders, rather than passing a new law to stop people from doing things that are already illegal.

The Planning Commission has asked staff to study up on this and report back in a few months.

20 Comments

On (Not) Redefining “Shop Local”

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 16, 2009 in Business.

C-Ville Weekly’s cover story this week (an AAN wire story, incidentally) is about big business’ efforts to co-opt the term “local,” like they did “organic.” The definition that they’re going for is that any business that has a location in the vicinity is “local”—Wal-Mart is local to Charlottesville, in that they have a location here, while walmart.com is not. Never mind that Wal-Mart contributes basically nothing to the local economy, other than lousy wages, while a local business would likely hire a local attorney, accountant, cleaning service, etc., and its profits would go to the owner, who would presumably spend much of that money here, too. Economics consultant Civil Economics has found that of $100 spent at a chain, $13 will stay in the area, while $100 spent at a local store will leave $45 circulating in the local economy. (See their recent “Local Works!” study for more on this contrast.) The suggestion incorporated by the author—a proponent of supporting local businesses—is to describe them as “independent local businesses,” though presumably a business willing to bend the definition of “local” is also willing to do the same for “independent.”

When folks started pushing the idea of shopping local a decade ago, it was a tough sell. These days, with a rough economy, people get it. Maybe a better line is “buy stuff from people you know.” Maybe you’re getting a home built by your carpenter friend, or maybe you’re just buying a dozen eggs from your neighbor, but unless you’re friends with the Waltons, that should be a pretty good guide.

13 Comments

Army Corps of Engineers Brings Meadowcreek Parkway to a Halt

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 17, 2009 in Government and Transportation.

The Army Corps of Engineers has refused to issue a permit for one of the segments of the Meadowcreek Parkway, NBC-29 reports, saying that they’re not about to allow the construction of a road to nowhere. Officially, the Meadowcreek Parkway is three projects—a road in Albemarle, a road in Charlottesville, and an interchange at 250. Critics charge that local officials are only taking that approach to skirt state and federal rules, and there is good reason to think that the road would be infeasible to construct if treated as a single entity. The Army Corps of Engineers is looking at the proposal for the Charlottesville portion of the road and balking at a road that simply stops in the middle of a park. This leaves the city and the county between a rock and hard place—they can’t build it as one road, and they also can’t build it in segments. Albemarle County is probably feeling pretty dumb right now—they’re 12% finished with building their segment, having deliberately jumped the gun in anticipating that no obstacles would arise. If this latest obstacle proves insurmountable, the county will prove to have wasted an enormous sum of money.

Where things go from here is anybody’s guess.

73 Comments

Market Street Grocery Opening in September

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 17, 2009 in Business.

A small grocery store is coming to downtown, Tracy Clemons reports for NBC-29, the unfortunately-named Market Street Market. In the old Unlimited Vitality space (”more cheese for your money” / “if you love me, don’t feed me junk food”), it’s being started by a father-and-son pair who are shooting to open their doors in early September. They name local meat and produce as two of the types of food they’ll be stocking. It’s not a particularly large space, but Unlimited Vitality always managed to stuff a lot in there, so presumably these folks can do likewise.

16 Comments

Comer Won’t Be Charged for Embezzlement?

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 21, 2009 in Crime and Business.

This Glenmore embezzling story has taken an interesting twist: Glenmore isn’t interested in pressing charges against Michael Comer, Brian McNeill writes for the Daily Progress.

The Glenmore Community Association (GCA)—of which Comer was treasurer—is the one that’s short $666k. Comer was writing checks to Glenmore Associates (which owns Glenmore, but is separate from the GCA, which is the homeowners’ association), for which he also worked, and then recording those checks as income to Glenmore Associates. But he never deposited those Glenmore Associates checks, but instead has been pocketing the money for the past four years. The GCA describes those checks as “unauthorized,” saying that Comer kept any mention of these checks off of the books. Also, payments that were supposed to be coming into GCA from Glenmore Associates were being pocketed by Comer, so he was getting the money coming and going.

Here’s where things get weird. Glenmore Associates’ Jeff Gaffney—who is also Comer’s brother-in-law and the CEO of Real Estate III—said that “the company would pay full restitution to the Glenmore Community Association,” and that they’re “committed to making [GCA] whole.” Which doesn’t make much sense, because “making them whole” would mean compensating both for money that Comer pocketed on its way to GCA from Glenmore Associates—which is sensible, since there’s an argument to be made that Comer failed to make those payments as an agent of Glenmore Associates—and for money that Comer stole by writing checks to Glenmore Associates. The fact that Comer happened to make those checks out to Glenmore Associates really has nothing to do with Glenmore Associates. They’ve got no obligation to make GCA whole. If I were a stockholder of Glenmore Associates, I’d be pretty upset about that.

McNeill writes that the GCA “is not pushing for a criminal investigation,” but that they “simply want their money back.” If Glenmore Associates is pressing charges for the money Comer has stolen from them, McNeill doesn’t mention it. Maybe Glenmore Associates wants this all to go away, and the easiest way to do it is to pay off GCA—which presumably has hundreds of members—and eat the difference. But that leaves a criminal—one who has abused the trust of his friends, neighbors, and coworkers to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars—walking away scot-free, not even a wanted man, having learned that crime pays. If that’s the outcome here, then Glenmore should be ashamed for failing utterly in their duty to society.

07/22 Update: Pressing charges or no, Tasha Kates writes in the Progress that the Albemarle PD and the FBI are jointly investigating the case. Kates also reports that Comer doesn’t actually live in Glenmore, that Glenmore Associates is justifying their payment to GCA as avoiding “a devaluation of Glenmore property values,” and that Comer has been GCA’s treasurer for 15 years. I wonder to what extent Glenmore is cooperating with the investigation, given their stated opposition to bringing Comer to justice. There are lots of other interesting bits, so give this a read.

37 Comments

“Save McIntire” Group Running Misleading Radio Ads

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 22, 2009 in Government and Transportation.

The McIntire Park Preservation Committee is running ads that contain inaccurate claims, Henry Graff reports for NBC-29. (Here’s a transcript of the ad.)

The narrator claims that “McIntire Park is about to be destroyed,” and that there will be “no more Dogwood Festival or Fourth of July fireworks.” Though it’s true that McIntire Park will be significantly reduced in area—and carved up—by the Meadowcreek Parkway, “destroyed” means that it will cease to exist, which is not true. There were erroneous reports that the Dogwood Festival would need to find a new home, which were immediately corrected by Mayor Dave Norris, who explained that the only problem was what to do with the festival for a single year, during construction. If the changes planned for McIntire would affect the Independence Day fireworks, that’s news to me, but if they can happen for the Dogwood Festival, presumably they can still happen on July 4th.

It seems to me that the reality of what’s slated for McIntire Park is bad enough that there’s no need to go making stuff up.

22 Comments

Mike Comer Arrested at Wintergreen

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 27, 2009 in Crime.

Accused embezzler Mike Comer was arrested at Wintergreen this afternoon, NBC 29 reports. He was found in their lodge, a literal stone’s throw from where search crews were looking for him a month ago. There’s no word on how long he’s been there, how he was found, or even what he’s been charged with, but presumably the whole sordid affair will all come out in the months ahead.

Michael Comer07/28 Update: From the “Terrible Ideas” category, Comer—accused of stealing $666,000—had to part with just $50,000 in order to post bond. I don’t care how you do the math, that’s just a sound financial move on Comer’s part. There’s no question the guy’s a flight risk, so the logic here escapes me. Commonwealth Attorney Denise Lunsford places the odds of him slowing up at “slim at best.” Apparently it was Comer’s wife who turned him in—he called her from a pay phone at Wintergreen, and she contacted police. Comer is now cooling his heels in his $1.35M home, where he may be, at the moment, having a “World’s Best Dad” badge pinned to his cardigan. (God help him if he’d stolen $600k from Glenmore via any method other than white-collar crime—he’d be held on $1M bail and facing thirty years, I guarantee it.) At right is his sharp new post-flight look, rocking an appearance not dissimilar to Jeffrey Shifflett at the time of his post-flight 2006 arrest.

12 Comments

Albemarle Fair Doubles in Awesomeness

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 28, 2009 in General News.

Grandfather and Grandson on the Scrambler
I adore the Albemarle County Fair. It’s my favorite time of year, which is to say this time of year—its six-day run started this evening. There are livestock displays, dozens of competitions, rides, loads of wildly unhealthy foods, and musical acts. (Plus great people watching opportunities.) A short drive south of town on 29, it’s open from 4 PM-11 PM during the week, 10 AM-11 PM on Saturday, and 1 PM-6 PM on its closing day, Sunday. Admission is $7 for adults and $3 for kids (free for kids aged six and under).

My only complaint about the fair is that they somehow fail to attract the very people who would enjoy it the most—basically the folks who shop at farmers markets, want to raise chickens in their backyards, and are just starting to reap the benefits of this year’s tomato crop. My fellow Tech alumni appear to outnumber UVA grads, if clothing is any indicator. If accents are any indicator, attendees are mostly local. This is the year in which that audience should expand. A group named Backyard Revolution is providing free (with admission) classes in all sorts of Virginia homesteading skills: rainwater harvesting, orienteering, urban chicken keeping, arrowsmithing, seed saving, blacksmithing, building a batteau, knitting, composting, spinning, cider making, wall building, log cabin making, and dozens and dozens of other deeply cool things. I want to go to all of these things. There’s a dedicated area in the fair set aside for these things, with both classes (first come, first served) and displays that will remain up for the duration of the fair.

Visit the fair, check them out on Facebook, tell us about the highlights here, and take pictures & post them to Flickr

13 Comments

White Supremacist Arrested for Harassing Police

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 29, 2009 in Crime.

Elisha Strom has been arrested for stalking undercover Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement detectives, WSLS reports. She’s been maintaining a blog dedicated to making public the identities of JADE members, where she describes stakeouts of their stakeouts, posts photos of the officers leaving their homes, provides dozens of surveillance photos of the detectives, and relates stories about how she goes about stalking them. It’s obsessive and creepy. It’s the photo of the officer leaving his home that’s gotten her charged.

Strom argues that the information that she’s provided is all a matter of public record, which is true, but stalking is itself a crime, and that’s because the components of stalking are all otherwise legal. None of this explains what Strom’s deal is with JADE members—it’s clear she’s trying to intimidate them, but there’s no telling why.

You’ll remember Strom for her husband, Kevin Strom, the pedophile, white supremacist and erstwhile cvillenews.com troll. He was arrested in early 2007, sentenced to two years in prison in April of last year, and released just a few months later. It was his wife who turned him into the police, accusing him of physically assaulting her to keep her from testifying against him.

07/30 Update: Lisa Provence provides a whole lot more information and analysis in The Hook.

93 Comments

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This is a community news blog about Charlottesville, VA, USA, started in March of 2001. It's run by Waldo Jaquith. It has nothing to do with C-Ville Weekly, the newspaper. Feel free to submit a story.